About this project

$28,872

pledged of $10,000 goal

920

backers

We're in the final hours. Every dollar and every backer counts, and each will make The People's E-Book tool all the stronger. Please pledge!

UPDATE: The People's E-Book will be built! Now, help us build it even better. Your continued pledging and sharing will make possible more and more of the features you want. As a thank you, for every $10K we raise above our original goal, we're commissioning a favorite artist to create a People's E-Book especially for our backers. Every backer, from the first to the last. E-books for everyone!

UPDATE 2: $20K Reached! ALL backers will receive a special e-book by artist David Horvitz!

The People's E-Book seeks to be a lab, an incubator, an e-book creation platform for artists, authors, and alternative presses who want to try new things, publish new books, and push into new territories. The People's E-Book will handle e-books of all sizes and scope, but it will excel in areas that no one else has cared to consider—the very small, the quick and dirty, the simple and the experimental.

The People's E-Book is a tool that doesn't account for what e-books are, but rather lets its users imagine what they can be: A short story or an epic poem, a blog post, a manifesto, a photobook, a book of moving photos, a book with a single word, a book with every word, sixteen-million colors, nine swimming pools, a video diary, an idea ...

Make alternative e-books possible. Join us in building The People's E-Book, a remarkable DIY tool anyone can use for free.

100 Years of Alternative Publishing

The People's E-book brings e-books into the rich tradition of creative publishing in which artists, authors and independent presses continue to co-opt and re-imagine what books can be.

Italian Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists pushed the limits of letterpress printing at the turn of the century. In the 1930s, artists and political activists alike made use of the new mimeograph for quick, cheap, portable printing of reasonable quality. By the 1960s color offset printing was coming into range of affordability and underground newspapers and magazines flourished. And while Fluxus and mail artists continued in the Dada tradition, creating and distributing unusual publications around the globe, the late 60s and 70s also saw the rise of the photocopier, that most humble of machines. The photocopier made possible a massive movement of punk and art zines, and a DIY publishing tradition that continues to this day. Thousands of people, making thousands of books.

How We E-Book

The People’s E-book is a super-simple online tool with an intuitive visual interface to allow anyone to make e-books quickly and for free. This is barebones e-book publishing. What the photocopier was to zines, we hope The People’s E-book will be to digital books.

Create an e-book in minutes, not hours — The People's E-Book requires only a bare minimum of content to output an e-book, while still encouraging advanced programming and creative hacking.

See your book as you create it — The People's E-Book features a unique visual editor and intuitive what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) and drag-and-drop controls.

Work in the most open and widely used e-book format on the market — The People's E-Book uses the HTML-based .epub format developed and maintained by members of the International Digital Publishing Forum, and adopted by major e-book companies everywhere.

We're confident that The People's E-Book is a great idea, but to make it into a great tool, we're asking for your help to build it.

Who We Are

My name is Greg Albers, and I'm the founder and publisher of Hol Art Books (Tucson, AZ). I started Hol to publish and promote exceptional writing on visual art because I believe narrative is a powerful tool in connecting people to art. As a reader and as a publisher, I love books that deepen my experience with art out in the world, not just in reproductions. This is why I love artists books too; because with artists books the book is the art. I think e-books can be the art too. I've spent much of the past two years speaking and writing about digital publishing. I'm thrilled to now be leading this exciting new project to push the boundaries of e-books in the arts, and every field, ever further.

To make The People's E-Book happen though, I need to hire a team with the background and skills to build it right. I'm lucky enough to have found a great team, Eleanor Hanson and Oliver Wise of The Present Group. The Present Group (Oakland, CA) is an arts-based think tank and creative studio whose projects focus on leveraging new technologies in support of the arts and finding new ways to fund and distribute artists projects. Founded in 2006, major works have included a limited edition based art subscription service, a web hosting service that funds an annual arts prize, and Art Micro Patronage, an online exhibition space showcasing and funding work ideally viewed online.

Rather than simply outsourcing development of The People's E-Book to a faceless technology company, bringing The Present Group in as collaborators gives The People's E-Book both a rock-solid technological foundation and a meaningful partnership in guiding and promoting the site to best serve artists and authors. Eleanor and Oliver are a small independent arts group who have continually done right in the projects they've undertaken, not only in doing exceedingly interesting work, but also in their unwavering commitment to finding ways to support the work of others.

The money we raise here will go to paying Eleanor and Oliver, and to covering hosting and development costs. It is a small amount for what we will ultimately accomplish together, but it's more than I can fund on my own.

A Rewarding Conclusion

It is a publisher's job to "make public" the work of talented authors and artists. It's rewarding work. In joining this project with your pledge, you become a publisher too. You are making public a free tool that we believe will be the genesis for a tremendous flowering of creativity in digital book publishing. You're not making just one book possible, but thousands.

We welcome you to book publishing, and we thank you for being here. For your pledge, we have a number of fantastic rewards to offer. From stickers and bookmarks, to e-books, video seminars, workshops and more. We hope you'll find the amount and reward that fits for you. And for every pledge, we'll be proud to list your name on a part of site we'll certainly be most proud of, the "People's E-Book Is People Funded" page. Thank you.

At the $100 READER level, choose any 5 Hol e-books (full list at www.holartbooks.com/e) and a matching E-Book Shelf Surrogate print of 1. Cut and fold the print into a lifelike paperback book and bookmark for your shelves. No one will be the wiser!

And don't miss the rare opportunity to join a small group of us in an online workshop on making e-books at the MAKER level. Even better, be one of the first ones in the door and get individual feedback and help with your own publishing projects as you help us build ours at the COLLABORATOR level. A great investment for individual artists and small presses alike. See you there!

Risks and challenges

The People's E-Book is designed to be simple for artists and authors to use and we believe in building that simplicity into the very core of the app. From coding to design, we're starting with the most basic pieces of e-book publishing and are focused on building a tool that does the right thing, not one that does everything. Start simple, stay simple.

Though the basic technology we're working with is straightforward and widely adopted, there will undoubtedly be challenges in making various parts of the system work. The .epub format itself, while based on simple .html, can also be particular in what it allows and doesn't allow and it will surely be a challenge to translate some of those rules into simple tools for our users. Also, a new version of .epub has been released and although it has yet to be widely adopted, it will pose both new opportunities and new difficulties in constructing our app.

There are always challenges in developing any new application, but our commitment to the need for this tool, paired with a background of solving thousands of web development problems on both the server and client side, gives us solid ground to stand on in facing those challenges.

FAQ

We're focused on EPUB, the most open, widely used e-book format out there; and the format we believe offers the best longevity and flexibility for the future. Increasingly, we'll offer support for users to convert their EPUB files into Kindle-friendly MOBI files and even into PDF. This will start with do-it-yourself instructions and move into full support within the tool itself as we can raise more, and build more.

Apple's iBooks Author puts out very pretty publications, but they are limited to a fairly stringent set of templates and navigational requirements, and can only be read on newer-generation iPads. Rather than being so pretty, The People's E-Book is very much e-books in the raw. We offer the blankest possible canvas in a format that can be read on the most devices, and encourage our users to play and experiment as much and as quickly as possible.

The People's E-Book is a web-based application that will be free for anyone to use, regardless of their pledge amount, or even if they pledge at all. Your pledges help us make it that way! And because it's web-based, it works on both Mac and PC.

Yes! We just haven't worked out the details of how much (maybe all) or under what license. As soon as we do, we'll post more here. Regardless, it's our mission to free e-books and we believe that means in content and creativity, as well as in creation.

Support this project

Select this reward

Pledge $10 or more
About $10

PEOPLE'S CHOICE: "My Other Book is a Paperback" sticker for your e-book reader; or "My Other Book is an E-Book" bookmark for your paperback. Plus, your name on our "People's E-Book Is People Funded" web page.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $35 or more
About $35

NEW! — THE EASY READER: 2 Hol Art Book e-books of your choice, the "My Other Book is a Paperback" e-reader sticker, and your name on our "People's E-Book Is People Funded" web page. (E-books may be chosen from any current or future Hol titles through the end of 2013, see www.holartbooks.com/e for an updated list. E-books not included in the $75 Winner Take All reward.)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $50 or more
About $50

ENTHUSIAST'S CHOICE: A live video seminar, with a choice of "E-Book Reading Revealed!" or "Cracking and Hacking the E-Book". Your name on our "People's E-Book Is People Funded" web page. A range of dates will be available for these 30-minute talks. Choose Sunday afternoon, Wednesday evening, or recorded session.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $75 or more
About $75

WINNER TAKE ALL: Everything from each of the three previous rewards. The sticker, the bookmark, the booklet, the button, and access to both of the video seminars! And of course, your name on our "People's E-Book Is People Funded" web page.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $100 or more
About $100

READER: E-Book Super Bundle (5 Hol Art Book e-books of your choice) and an E-Book Shelf Surrogate print. Your name on our "People's E-Book Is People Funded" web page. E-books may be chosen from any current or future titles through the end of 2013, see www.holartbooks.com/e for an updated list.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $250 or more
About $250

MAKER: "How To E-Book" two-and-a-half-hour online .epub workshop and personalized feedback, plus your own copy of our handmade booklet "The Essential People's E-Book", some e-books to tinker with, and your name on our "People's E-Book Is People Funded" web page. A range of dates will be available for this live workshop, with participation for each date limited to ten people or less.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $1,000 or more
About $1,000

IGNITER: A People's E-Book outfitted Kobo Touch eReader (Wired Magazine's 2012 Editor's Pick for Best eReader) featuring 10 specially selected People's E-Books from among the first produced on the site. Plus, premier placement for your logo or name on our "People's E-Book Is People Funded" web page.